Games like Sengoku Dynasty require patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a fully functioning settlement in the heart of feudal Japan. It has taken me a lot of time to get into the rhythm of Superkami’s life management title. While the fruits of labour so start to look delicious after putting in plenty of hours, it is the time it takes to get there that feels the most frustrating. If you have the the time to give Sengoku Dynasty, it will greatly reward you, and now it’s on PS5, there’s a whole new audience there to get involved.
After washing up on the shores of Nata Valley, you’re goal is to create a peaceful settlement where refugees can live out their days free from the hardship of war. It’s not easy starting from scratch, and in these early stages you’ll be tearing your hair out trying to get things off the ground. I’m a man with little patience, and waiting to see vast improvements to my settlement took a lot of time. Although it’s easier to see the wood from the trees, watching people join my cause and offer their services made me feel as though it was all worth it.
Finding somewhere to settle is the first step. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to get to work gathering resources by picking them from the earth, hacking rock with a pickaxe, or shopping wood down with an axe. This takes the bulk of your time. Later on you can get villagers to aid you in gathering supplies, but it’s all on you to scavenge the bulk of these important materials. Building everything from storage to homes take time. Choosing the blueprint and building it up piece by piece is cleverly visualised.
You don’t swing a magic wand and it’s built. Instead, you lay the foundations, then the floor, the the walls, and then the roof. Each building is built with intricacy. It helps you to see every part of the construction in its entirety, bringing a great sense of satisfaction. I remember how it felt building my first home. It felt like such an achievement, but in the grand scheme of things it was merely a drop in the ocean. The pressure to survive – to thrive – is always there, and it will either break you or drive you to keep on going.
It’s not just about building your village. Sengoku Dynasty is about building a community. Increasing your level brings new recipes and skills. These new abilities help to provide a better life for you and your people. In welcoming new people to your village, you need to keep an eye on their hunger and happiness. This provided a stronger sense of purpose as it wasn’t just me who needed to survive but these other people affected by the war around us. I would have preferred a more personal and deeper story, but there are still enough beats to make you care.
You’re not restricted to simply building one village and staying there. In this sense, Sengoku Dynasty can be as big or as little as a game as you like. Exploring the world and finding new people to talk to, new villages, and even enemies to come into conflict with. The combat system is rather basic, and I never found it particularly exciting to play through. Enemies don’t really challenge you, and despite there being different weapons to use, it always felt like an afterthought while going form task to task or mission to mission.
Sengoku Dynasty allows you plenty of freedom to live how you want or to do what you want. The problem is you’re not given a lot of hand-holding. There were times when I wasn’t sure what I needed to do, and I couldn’t find the answer to do it. A more intuitive tutorial would have been appreciated. It also has its share of technical hiccups. I had resources disappear, and some couldn’t be picked up. There’s some texture pop-ins and a touch of buggy movements, but on the whole it ran pretty well.
If you’re looking to build a life for yourself in Sengoku Dynasty, there’s plenty of opportunities to do so exactly how you want. While some of the building mechanics feel tricky to understand and resource gathering is laborious, starting to see all your hard work come together is satisfying. Combat is a little basic and I would have loved to have seen a deeper story at play. Despite these issues, I enjoyed seeing my settlement come together and my people grow while I took the occasional moment to sit back and feel a great sense of pride in my achievements.
